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In defence of Danny

For those of you who aren't familiar with Danny Healy Rae, he's an elected representative in our illustrious parliament and hails from Kerry.

There are those who would brand him a redneck or a culchie, but I would prefer the term "cute hoor" which roughly translates as he'd live in your ear and let the other ear out in flats.

He has come in for some shtick lately over a speech he made in the Dáil on the subject of climate change. Since then he has been the subject of much mirth, ridicule and sneering, and I haven't seen one word in support of his ideas.

OK, so his accent is as thick as pig-shit and he sounds as if he's just repeating something that someone down the pub egged him into saying but I happen to agree with him. Well, actually I don't agree with him, but I do agree with what he is trying to say.

By denying climate change, Healy-Rae is abandoning the interests of the very people he claims to be representing. Denying climate change is anti-farming, anti-agriculture, anti-rural life, anti-reality.

But the whole point is that Healy Rae isn't denying climate change and nor am I. What he is saying [or trying to say] is that climate change is real simply because it is always changing and has been doing so from its very origins.

Global temperature over 400,000 years

What Healy Rae is trying to say [I think] is that we humans have fuck all to do with any changes. To change the climate of a planet requires mechanisms on a planetary scale. The Sun goes through phases, as does the Earth's orbit and indeed its very core. None of these factors are fully understood, but they all contribute to the formula. In comparison, Mankind's contributions are so miniscule as be be totally insignificant.

So Eamon Ryan and his Green Party can jump up and down screaming that we're killing the planet, but he might as well jump up and down in the hope of creating an earthquake.

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In defence of Danny — 8 Comments

Well, he's talking sense, although a bit rough around the eloquence edges I must say. Especially over the dredging of rivers. We're banned over here (UK) from dredging anything which has led to massive flooding recently. All to do with the "environment". And the windmills!!! OMG! They are every-bloody-where. They are so so ugly and they ruin the views. Imagine Connemara covered in these damned things. And the only reason they get put up is to claim the subsidy, because they are so inefficient compared to conventional power.

On an aside, my wife (she's Irish) and I ended up chatting to some farmer type on the marina in Kilrush a few years ago and I have no idea what he said. Not one word. So our friend here from Kerry is perfectly clear…

Some Kerry and West Cork accents can have a lilt. English tourists rolling off the ferry at Rosslare have been known to drive for a couple of hours and stop sun-spotted farmers on the roadside to ask where they may get beverages and saunas. And some farmers have replied politely but insistently that badgers and sows are not kept in them mountain parts. So you see, international misunderstandings based on sthrange accents pose a two-way communication problem. The Kerry Institute for Phonetics and Philology, KIPP, should get cracking on the matter. But Grandad, thanks for clarifying the premeditated speech of Danny Healy-Rae (who is definitely not related to Kim Jong-Rae-il of North Korea) by trying, accurately I think, to explain what the elected representative for Kerry was trying to say about historical and cyclical climate change. He also wondered in his Dail speech what use government and agencies had made of the carbon taxes we had to pay with our electricity bills for many years. His speech hit nails on the head in a more blunt manner than any college-educated Green Party public representative could ever do.

I would also dearly love to know what happens to my "carbon taxes". I presume they just vanish into the pot that's paid to the EU, or some other worthless enterprise.

I love the Cork accent but find the Kerry one a little harsher on the ear. It's a bit like the Norn Iron accent compared to the Scottish one – I find the former very grating but the latter very musical, yet they are quite similar. Weird.

You must admit though that it's a brilliant scam? No matter how much money is scammed off us, the climate keeps changing, giving them an excuse to scam us for even more. Next they'll be charging us for gravity.